Best Astrology Programs for Linux ~ Bringing open source software to a wider audience, here are the best eight astrology programs for Linux. Testing under Ubuntu 10.10 (32-bit) I found four wouldn’t install at all, two suited disciplines other than Western astrology and one only ran from the command line, leaving a single link worth a further look next week…

Browserling Tools ~ Browserling is a subscription service that allows developers to test their work under either Windows or Android with an array of different browsers and versions. Obviously they need to earn a living, but attract visitors by offering plenty of useful tools for free. I enjoyed converting text into Base64 and hexadecimal, for example. Possibly, I should get out more?

BugMeNot ~ Don’t you hate websites that force you to register, for no other reason than to send you shedloads of spam and to pass on your information to others who’ll do just the same? Here’s a neat way to bypass the whole process by sharing logins and email addresses for popular sites and to submit details you’ve found useful.

C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) Comet Viewer ~ Notoriously hard to predict, the first of two bright comets anticipated during 2013 was first spotted from the UK on March 13, having been pinpointed initially with the Pan-STARRS telescope based in Hawaii during 2011. Here is a helpful program to tell you when this comet is the brightest and where in the zodiac it can be seen…

C/2012 S1 (ISON) Comet Viewer ~ After the anticlimax of comet C/2011 L4 (PANSTARRS) from a UK perspective recently, all hopes now rest with comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) that some believe, will become bright enough to be seen during daylight hours, around Thanksgiving Day 2013. Download this small program to track the comet’s path and progress yourself.

Cartes du Ciel / SkyChart ~ Cartes du Ciel or SkyChart for you monoglots out there, is a free desktop planetarium that supports an enormous database of astronomical features. It is fully cross-platform and shows the planets, stars, comets, asteroids and nebulae on Windows, the Mac or Linux. It takes time to configure, but you’ll learn lots about the universe in the process…

Cenon Astrology ~ Across a web dominated by Windows, alternatives are few if you don’t want a Mac. Linux is one you could try, much praised by many, but used by only 0.25% of those who visit this site. Linux has a geeky reputation, but it’s free. Also
free is much of this software, which helps astrologers who can’t get over Mac OS-X too!

Common Vulnerabilities & Exposures ~ Many will be expecting something more salacious, considering the title of this week’s recommendation. But sadly, I am only nerding out again, as has often been my tendency. It is amusing for those who know about such things, to see how the claims of folk sold on what they believe to be a secure operating system, match up to scrutiny.

Darwin ~ While the gullible and the bewildered, dig deep for the latest Apple operating system, others recognise there are free alternatives that allow them greater choice. In fact, an open-source operating system called Darwin: built on Unix, the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) and FreeBSD in particular, forms the base system of macOS. Why not check the code, yourself?

Dead Drops ~ Conceived by a media artist from Berlin, the Dead Drops project is about creating an open, offline network. You take a cheap USB flash drive and cement it into the side of a public building for example, then add it to their database. All six listed for my neighbourhood and dated 2011 turned out not to be there anymore, but new dead drops are born constantly…

Desktop Wallpapers ~ I am not recommending this site for its astrology content, but rather for some of the value-added features, several of which are quite fun. These desktop wallpapers are strangely handsome and come in a range of resolutions that may work with modern monitors, if you don’t mind adjusting a few things, to help them display at their best.

DistroWatch ~ Putting the fun back into computing isn’t necessarily a sentiment I’d echo, but the infinite variety of the Linux world comes as a huge surprise, to those familiar with Windows and Apple. If you know a little about computers, you can try most Linux distros for free, often in the form of a live CD or DVD, you won’t even need to install.

Down For Everyone Or Just Me? ~ The last Monday in August marks a public holiday across much of the UK, but this year at Astrologywizard.com was the occasion for roughly fifteen hours of downtime. Clearly outages like this should never happen but if they do, this is one way of discovering whether the fault lies with my web host or originates far closer to home.

Elements & Ephemerides: Observable Comets ~ Continuing with the buzz comets are creating currently, the Minor Planet Center has an ephemeris for each of those presently observable, that you can download to a range of popular astronomy programs to see where they are yourself. There’s nothing specifically for astrologers yet, but somebody’s working on this, surely?

Facebook - Where’s The Dislike Button? ~ Following on from last week’s revelations, here is more from the Free Software Foundation on why Facebook’s user-tracking “Like” button is such a bad thing. Not convinced? Click over to the linked research paper from a doctoral candidate at Tilburg University (TILT) in the Netherlands, then come back and tell me about it…

FreeBSD ~ Although Linux now powers the top 500 supercomputers worldwide, there remains a place for the descendants of the Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD) and FreeBSD in particular. A permissive licence that allows FreeBSD as the basis for commercial projects, has seen it behind Apple’s macOS and iOS; also Netflix, WhatsApp, the Sony PlayStation 4 and Yahoo!